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Groundbreaking set for hospital

By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer

A groundbreaking for Arkansas City's new $16 million hospital, CoVista Medical Center, will take place at 3 p.m. April 28. It is located two and a half miles north of town, accessed from U.S. 77 and 242nd Road.

Public parking for the event will be at the Tango Transport terminal at 23502 N. 61st Road, north of the new hospital site. Those who attend will be transported from the Tango Transport parking lot to the groundbreaking, and will be returned to the lot after the ceremony, hospital officials said.

The hospital will replace the South Central Kansas Regional Medical Center at 216 W. Birch Avenue. Construction on the new hospital should be completed by mid-June of 2007, said Clayton Pappan, SCKRMC's director of marketing.`

"I don't know if I can put into words how I feel," Carla Magner, chief operating officer of SCKRMC, said today of the groundbreaking. "I am extremely pleased and very excited. It has been a long time coming."

Invitation-only events are planned after the groundbreaking. They include a reception immediately after the event at the Ark City Dance banquet facility at 215 N. Summit, where beverages and hors d'oeuvres will be served. That night, from 7 p.m. to midnight, a dance will be held at the Arkansas City Country Club.

CoVista Medical Center will be a new entity, operated as a for-profit, limited liability corporation. This contrasts with the structure of SCKRMC, a quasi-public, non-profit institution.

The new hospital project is a joint venture of Cardiovascular Hospitals of America based in Wichita, a group of Ark City physicians who formed Midwest Healthcare Alliance and the City of Arkansas City.

CoVista's major owner is CHA (51 percent) and minority owners are MHA (48 percent) and the City of Arkansas City (1 percent).

Arkansas City physician Bob Yoachim said the group of 15 local doctors invested their own money to build the new hospital. It is a risk worth taking, he said, because the new hospital will help the community.

Together, the two main owners -- MHA and CHA -- will be responsible for a down payment of 20 percent of the construction cost, Yoachim said. The building will cost around $15 million, he said.

Pappan said the new facility should offer the following advantages:

* 24 private, acute-patient rooms in a building more than 60,000 square feet.

* State-of-the-art, single story design combining staff efficiencies and patient convenience.

* Five-bed intensive care unit, including a negative pressure isolation room.

* Six-bed obstetrics wing, featuring a private waiting area and four, family birthing suites.

* Advanced technology radiology unit, offering the area's most progressive imaging options.

* Four centralized operating rooms for private and convenient outpatient and inpatient surgery.

* A separate on-campus medical office building housing several area physicians and medical specialties, planned for completion at the same time the hospital opens.

Pappan said the SCKRMC replacement facility plan has continued to develop since the mid-1990s. The original plan was to expand and renovate the current facility. In 2000, the project's architect presented the initial plan to the SCKRMC board of trustees.

The plan eventually was rejected by the board. A feasibility study to determine construction costs of renovating exceeded those of building an entirely new facility, Pappan said.

Several locations were considered for the new hospital. The site was chosen after the late Don and Wilda Patterson donated 168 acres of farm ground for the project in December 2001.

The original arrangement was that SCKRMC pay the Patterson small, monthly payments once ground was broken on the new facility, Pappan said. But once they died, the land was donated for the hospital with no payments.

Some local residents have questioned why a new hospital is being built so far from the center of town. But hospital officials insist the new facility will offer more convenience to patients than the current hospital, and that people will get used to the new location.

"It's a matter of perspective," Manger said. "Change is always hard."

She noted that residents had adapted to other moves over the years -- for example, the moving of the high school from downtown to West Radio Lane.

Arkansas City has operated a hospital at the First Street and Birch Avenue location since 1906. It has been remodeled, added to and had its name changed several times over the years.

Above: This computer rendering shows the front design of the new hospital planned for north of Arkansas City.